HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
figure 6-5
values of the enctype attribute
Value
Description
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
The default format. In this format, form data is transferred as a
long text string in which spaces are replaced with the + char-
acter and nontext characters (such as tabs and line breaks) are
replaced with their hexadecimal code values. Field names are
separated from their field values with an = symbol.
multipart/form-data
Used when sending files to a server. In this format, spaces and
nontext characters are preserved, and data elements are sepa-
rated using delimiter lines. The action type of the
form
element
must be set to
post
for this format.
text/plain
Form data is transferred as plain text with no encoding of
spaces or nontext characters. This format is most often used
when the action type of the
form
element is set to
mailto
.
Alice tells you that your survey form will be processed by the CGI script located at
the URL
http://www.redballpizza.com/cgi-bin/survey
(a
fictional address) using the post
method. You do not have to specify a value for the
enctype
attribute because the default
value of
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
is appropriate. Add this information to
the
form
element now.
To add attributes to the
form
element:
◗
1.
Return to the
survey.htm
file and add the following attributes to the
form
element, as shown in Figure 6-6:
method=”post”
figure 6-6
setting the form attributes
◗
2.
Save your changes to the file.
Because
www.redballpizza.com/cgi-bin/survey
do
es not correspond to a real CGI
script running on the Web and thus cannot process the survey form you'll create in
this tutorial, you'll add a JavaScript program named
formsubmit.js
to handle the form.
The purpose of this program is to intercept the contents of the form before the browser
attempts to contact the CGI script. The script also will report whether or not the data con-
tained in the survey form has been correctly filled out. You'll add a link to this script now.
